Static Main Menu

Solving Service Related Problems and their Recurrence (Explained With Diagram)

Article shared by :

ADVERTISEMENTS:

Solving Service Related Problems and their Recurrence (Explained With Diagram)!

When a problem is caused by controllable, internal forces, there’s no excuse for allowing it to recur. In fact, maintaining customers’ goodwill after a service failure depends on keeping promises made to the effect “we’re taking steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again”. With prevention in mind, let’s look briefly at some simple, but powerful, quality tools for monitoring service quality and determining the root cause of specific problems that upset customers.

Flowcharting:

ADVERTISEMENTS:

Once managers understand the underlying processes behind service delivery, it’s easier to iden­tify potential fail points which represent weak links in the chain. Knowing what can go wrong (and where) is an important first step in preventing service quality problems.

Control charts:

These charts offer a simple method of displaying performance over time against specific quality criteria. Since they are visual, trends are easily identified. Figure 14.9 shows an airline’s perfor­mance on the important criterion of on-time departures, suggesting that this issue needs to be ad­dressed by management, since performance is erratic and not very satisfactory. Of course, control charts are only as good as the data on which they are based.

The fishbone chart:

ADVERTISEMENTS:

Cause-and-effect analysis employs a technique first developed by the Japanese quality expert, Kaoru Ishikawa. Groups of managers and staff brainstorm all the possible factors that might cause a specific problem. The resulting factors are then categorized into one of five groupings – Equipment, Manpower (or People), Material, Procedures, and Other – on a cause and effect chart, popularly known as a fishbone chart because of its shape. This technique has been used for many years in manufacturing and, more recently, in services (Figure 14.10)

Pareto analysis:

Pareto analysis (named after the Italian economist who first developed it) seeks to identify the principal causes of observed outcomes. This type of analysis underlies the so- called 80/20 rule, because if often reveals that around 80% of the value of one variable (in this instance, number of service failures) is accounted for by only 20% of the causal variable (i.e. number of possible causes).